


Spectre

by desreelee123



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Dependency, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Minor vicky/david, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 12:24:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18476176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desreelee123/pseuds/desreelee123
Summary: He was her faithful toy soldier.





	Spectre

I  
Therapy is slow, drab, and dredges up old wounds that David would've just preferred to have kept hidden before, shoved in the backalleys of his mind, festering. But in its own little way, it helps.

He gets to go on more weekend trips with the kids, his wife finally looks at him with something other than barely concaled pity and worry, and he finally learns how to breathe a little easier. His marriage is far from fixed however and he thinks that no matter what he does, that space between him and Vick, that chasm is there to stay. The war has ruined him just like how it has ruined everyone he knew. That, he cannot change. Just like how he cannot change the reality of his marriage.

He's not sure he wants to though, maybe for the kids yeah but for his own personal reasons he'd rather he and Vicky stay the way they are. They're better as friends anyways.

But maybe he can start picking up the pieces now, try to superglue the broken shards of his sanity in the best way he can if not for himself, then for his family.

So when he's finally cleared for duty again he accepts a promotion that's not really a promotion but more of a raise and a relegation to administrative work, something which he would've scowled at months before. But he finds peace in the monotony of organizing rotas and filing away pension claims. He has his badge and gun and the force owes him. He has gotten offers from SO15 and several other divisions, attractive offers that entail more field work and long hours so suffice to say he could have any kind of work he wants even if it is just for a limited window of time but it doesn't matter because he's going to try. And trying means taking desk work more seriously.

Trying also means going to 5pm Wednesday appointments with the head shrinker and taking medication twice a day, once before going to bed and once before starting the day. He isn't sure if the talking helps sometimes but he's definitely sure about the pills. They keep the blood and gunshots out of his mind during the day and during his sleep.

Except…her. During the night, he dreams of her, lips curled into a soft smile as he spoons her during the early hours of morning, with the sunlight just beginning to filter in through the curtains in soft wisps of light, far away from the maddening chaos of the city. During the day, he sees her sometimes, a splash of brunette curls disappearing in a corner, a whiff of her perfume here and there as someone passes him in the lobby. He thinks that maybe if he just closes his eyes…and focuses enough, she might be there, standing tall and proud before him with her back turned, her nose in some report like it always is.

There are nights that he wishes so badly for her that it hurts.

He doesn't tell that to the shrinker, for a variety of reasons not at all equal in importance.

II  
It's a year after when she finally shows up.

She's sat on his toilet in a grey cocktail dress. She looks younger, more vibrant, the twinkle in her eye brighter than he was used to seeing before…even back when she was alive. Her hair too was longer, thicker, less held together. Her gown looked out of place in his small bathroom, a short grey number that showed off her slim legs clad in ornate patterned stockings, accentuated by her simple black pumps, with a long train that spread out haphazardly across the tiled floor.

"David," she says, all smiles and brown locks. "I was wondering how long you'd keep me waiting."

"J-Julia," he stammers, his tongue a leaden weight behind his lips.

"Don't look so surprised," she smirks. "We both knew it was only a matter of time."

And he did. Maybe he doesn't like to admit it to herself but he was expecting her because whether he likes it or not, he knows that a part of her will always stay with him.

"What are you doing here?"

Today is the anniversary of her death and for the life of him, he couldn't bring himself to visit her grave. So instead, she visited him.

"I can't pay a visit to a good friend?" she stands up at that, puts a hand to his cheek and he notices just how different she looks. The lines and crevices around her eyes are close to nonexistent, her skin smooth as paper. 

"How old are you right now?"

She chuckles.

"Nineteen and thirty days in spirit," she whispers to his ear. He tries to remember every single photo of her he's seen before. Her smiling in photos next to foreign dignitaries, various prime ministers, but he's never seen any of her when she was younger. He doesn't know how his mind could have managed to cook this up.

"God, you're so…"

"Young?" her smirk turns rueful. "Yes, I guess I used to be."

She leans up and sniffs his neck, closing the distance between them, and closes her eyes. He feels her hands go down, down to the waistband of his pants. David lets her undress him as he stands there, frozen. She leads them to his bedroom, kicks off her heels, shimmies out of her dress, and sits on his mattress in nothing more but lingerie and her stockings.

No, she can't be real, he thinks as he feels his himself take steps toward the bed.

This can't be real, he thinks as he pushes her down onto the mattress. He keeps thinking the same thing over and over as he undresses her, as he enters her, up until the point he shudders his release. 

But everything about her feels oh, so real and somewhere deep and secret, he misses her. 

He misses it so much that he doesn't care anymore about what's real and what's not.

III  
He wakes up the next morning to an empty bed, unsurprisingly. He looks around and doesn't see any sign that somebody else had been in his apartment.

David scours his building's CCTV for any sign of anyone entering or exiting the premises during the night, looks at the entire night's and also the next morning's video logs. 

Aside from a couple of his other neighbors going in and out of their pads, he doesn't find anything.

IV  
He goes about for the rest of the year in a haze of paperwork and therapy sessions. Weekends are for Vick and the kids. Fridays are for colleagues and a pint at the pub. The monsters of the war are, for the most part, kept at bay but there are nights where he can feel them edging into the background of his consciousness, inky and insidious.

Those nights he just chooses to lie awake. 

No amount of breathing exercises could keep the demons away for long.

But through it all, a part of him keeps yearning, waiting for that telltale kiss on his lips or that wisp of brown on his pillow. Nowadays when he dreams of her, he dreams of him sitting on the passenger side of the black towncar beside Terry, with Julia at the back perusing some important paperwork or talking intently to someone on the phone or him standing behind her back in the elevator ride to her floor at the Home Office. 

Mundane. Ordinary.

V  
She comes again during the second anniversary of her death. This time, she's older. Not so old than when she had last shown herself but there are slight creases around her eyes now and her hair's cut to a sensible length, the curls held back into a ponytail. She's wearing a navy blue pantsuit.

"Hello again David," she speaks first. He finds her sitting on his kitchen table.

"Is this going to be a yearly thing?" he asks, brows furrowed, as he takes a seat across her.

She shrugs, the gesture slight and matter-of-fact and final, the only way Julia can.

"How old are you this time?"

"I would say about twenty-four or twenty-five? Fresh out of law school."

That made sense.

"How are you David?" she asks pointedly, crossing her legs. Age, like the shadowy traitor, comes slowly and silently. He looks at himself in the mirror every day and sees the lines deepening, his hairline beginning to recede, the blue of his eyes starting to dim.

"Fine, 'm fine," he answers, not at all untruthfully. He notices that there's something markedly different about her this time. She's much more subdued, a bit less fiery. She seems a bit…tired. "Do you want some cuppa?"

"That'll be perfect," she says, managing a small smile. He stands up to get a spare cup and saucer from his cupboard and boils some water.

"Are you real?" his voice cracks at 'real'. He isn't quite sure why he's even asking her.

"I'm as real as you are," she answers cryptically. He sets down the cuppa in front of her, to which she gives him a polite nod. They sit in silence as she drinks her tea and he looks at anything but her. 

"Do you want me to go?"

The question is uttered softly, maybe even with a bit of shame coloring her voice. Her lipstick stains the part of her cup where her lips used to be.

"No," he decides as he gets up and goes to his bedroom. She follows behind his footsteps, settles on one side of the bed while he sheds his clothes and settles on the other.

They spend a small amount of time just staring at the ceiling, neither bothering to make the first move. 

Finally, she speaks, "Can we just…stay like this?"

He swallows.

"Yeah."

By morning she is gone but the memory of her remains.

VI  
He visits her grave the very next day. David kneels in front of the tombstone, staring blankly at her name engraved in elegant letters, figuring out if they're real or not.

His grandmother used to tell him stories of ghosts of lovers that haunt their beloved long after they've gone, unable to let go. 

Maybe it's not the ghost who's unable to let go but those who remain.

David doesn't know if he was ever in love with her or she with him. He's never really talked about her to anyone else or even actively acknowledged their affair in any significant way. But he knew he was willing to do most anything for her. Maybe even a bit more than he would be for his own wife.

He was her faithful toy soldier. The pawn in the chess board. Pawns are meant to protect the queen. They're the ones who are expendable. After all there are a number of them but there is only one Queen.

But she's dead now. And until now he isn't really sure where they stood.

VII  
It is Christmas Eve when David finally meets Vicky's new boyfriend. He's tall and blonde and works at the same hospital as she does as a cardiologist. He's eloquent and subdued and lacks the emotional scars that David has. From the getgo, David can see that he'll be good for the kids. He's the type of man that can always be there.

There is a trickling sense of jealousy which he stamps out steadfastly when Vicky introduces him. They make small talk and by the end of the night David can actually safely say that he can grow to like the guy. Definitely…maybe.

"Will you be all right?" Vicky asks once the night was over and he was about to go home. He wanted to stay for a bit longer, maybe talk to Vicky for a while about everything and nothing at the same time. 

But he knows this will be good for her.

"Yeah love, I think I'll be."

She nods, licks her lips, and calls out for the kids to say goodbye to their father. He wonders how long it'll be until she decides to move on and finally divorce him. This guy, Phil, a cookie-cutter potential husband and surrogate father, will be a good addition to her life, probably even much better than he ever was.

He realizes, the thought doesn't really pain him as much anymore.

VIII  
His therapist's room is all white walls and tall glass windows. The chaise longue is colored a modern shade of cream and the lamps, the desks, and the furniture all blending into one subdued haze.

"So how are you today Mr. Budd?" his psychiatrist of three years is a British-African woman of average height. He wonders how many have sat in this same chair as he did during the day, staring at her and at everything else all at the same time.

"I'm well, just took Vick and the kids out to the carnival last Saturday."

"I trust you had a relaxing weekend then," she utters clinically, her lips slightly upturned to resemble a smile. He's told her all kinds of things during their sessions together, the horrors of the Afghan war, the shouts of countless women and children as bullets whizzed past them at dizzying speeds, and the comfort of the buzz at the bottom of the beer bottle. During good days, he even talked about Vicky and him at the early years of their marriage.

But he never talked about Julia Montague.

His psychiatrist knows enough to know that her death still haunts him significantly, his greatest failure to date. But she doesn't know just how far it reverberates inside him. She doesn't know that she was more than just a principal, more than a friend even. Julia will just always be in that secret, sacred part of him that no one will ever know about.

She doesn't (and won't ever) know that he dreams of her some nights. 

Or about her annual visits to his apartment.

IX  
"Hello again David."

It's their third year when she appears in her mid-thirties. 

She's dressed in a sensible blouse and trousers, no longer the flaming youth of her late teens or the tired, slightly disillusioned budding adult of her early twenties but already quite resembling the firm and commanding woman that the world, even for a brief time, had come to know, very well on her way to the Julia she will be…or was. Perched upon the arm of his couch, she looks immortal and unreal.

"Ma'am," he utters a bit breathlessly because her being here brings back so much emotions. She was his rock, one of the few anchors mooring him down to Earth…once.

"Rough day?" she inquires.

"Nah, not really," he doesn't know if she catches the beat in his tone, a marked change in tempo. There's nothing really stressful about filing and printing out forms.

"Do you miss it?"

"Miss what?" he asks, proceeding to make her a cup of tea.

"Being out and about in the field, being in the thick of it," she persists. He avoids looking up, choosing instead to focus on making her tea. 

"I don't know," he lies but Julia, or not-Julia, knows better. The knowledge shines bright and unambiguous in her eyes.

"You should go back out there," she declares with such a finality that almost makes him assent.

But not yet. He isn't sure if he can still go back to that life. Maybe he'll never be able to.

"We'll see," he lies again.

That night, he resolves to keeping his eyes open and watch for the exact moment she disappears but he inexplicably wakes up again, evidently having fallen asleep, to an empty bed and an empty apartment.

X  
There are some nights when the past roars at him in violent growls. His therapist tells him it was normal for that to happen. Men and women who had gone through same or similar things as he had usually experienced those kinds of nights. Those nights he chooses to stay awake, afraid of what sleep may bring him.

Maybe it really was his fault, that she had died. She hadn't known of his relations with Andy Apsted or the deep murderous thoughts he used to harbor for everything and everyone that related to what she had represented in life. He remembered feeling guilt after Thornton Circus. He knew she was never really quite herself after that. Maybe he should've been honest about it all, Andy and everything else in between.

If he had, maybe she'd still be alive.

It was the first time though that he saw her facade crumble to pieces, fear and terror and survival instincts overriding her usual pragmatism. She had sat there, in the backseat of the towncar, drenched in blood and twitching in the abject horror of it all. He had held her cold and sweaty hand for a few moments as they were being shot at before exiting the car and heading to Pascoe House to confront the man who used to be his friend, a man too far gone to be saved.

A part of him was convinced that maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't have come to him had it not been for that fateful day at Thornton Circus. She wouldn't have ran to his arms…ever. The affair that had followed was brief and tumultuous but it had exalted him, served as his outlet for everything that couldn't work out in his life. Finally, there was a woman who wanted him, scars and imperfections and all. Vicky hadn't wanted him after the war, saw his scars and his trembling hands and had rejected him in that quiet, passive way of hers.

But she, Julia Montague, saw him and had wanted him. Scars and all.

XI  
Vicky calls him one dewy Wednesday morning.

"I've decided to let Phil move in," she says. The words stall the cogs in his brain for a few short moments.

"What?"

She sighs on the other line, audible and palpable.

"Phil's moving in."

"Okay," he shrugs. He doesn't know how his marriage had come to this point where he is consenting to his wife letting another man move in with her and their children.

He finds that he no longer really cares, except for his visitation rights to his children, which Vicky assures him is perfectly intact.

"All right Vick, you deserve to be happy," he tells her and the words don't really feel forced.

"Thank you David."

The line goes dead.

XII  
For three consecutive days, David makes a habit of loitering by his commanding officer's office for a few minutes every morning, failing to muster enough courage to knock and make that request. The man who had replaced Craddock was a silent, greying man with too much caffeine in his blood and too many unspoken silences in his eyes. David knows that he used to be ex-military, just like he was.

When they were introduced, the man had flashed him a knowing look and it was like an understanding had passed between them.

Don't ask, don't tell.

On the day he finally musters up enough courage to knock and ask for the reassignment, the greying individual in question just says, "Took you long enough."

They subject him to the usual procedural white noise before getting reassigned. He secures a positive recommendation from his therapist easily enough and goes through several physical exams before he's cleared for field duty.

His first assignment was on a counterterrorism task force. It was a predictable assignment, given how it's come to the department's attention that he had a knack for it. If it weren't for him the whole conspiracy surrounding Julia wouldn't have been cracked wide open.

"Welcome back Skip," one of his old buddies say after news of his return spreads around the office and for once, he feels himself smile.

XIII  
Julia's funeral was a muted, quiet affair that he was never invited to. Her ex-husband, Roger Penhaligon, had been there, dressed in an expensive suit, the perfect picture of the grieving husband, all quiet tears and silken handkerchiefs. Her mother, a hunched old woman dressed all in black, a divisive figure in Julia's life that the deceased hadn't regarded in a very positive light, was also there. The old matriarch hadn't shed a single tear but David, from where he had been hiding amongst the trees, could make out the slight tremor in her gloved hands and the way she clung to Roger's arm too tightly.

Parents aren't supposed to bury their children.

Aside from Roger and Julia's mother, there was a small smattering of faces, some David could recognize from photos Julia had kept around her house and some entirely foreign to him. The whole thing was a surprisingly private affair, given just how public her life and death were.

He doesn't suppose this would've been how Julia wanted her death to play out. She was a woman who wanted to be seen. She hadn't wanted to live a quiet life and go out with a whisper. She wanted to change everyone's lives.

He supposes that maybe this was Roger's doing. If anything, that man lives to oppose Julia in everything she does. The thought made him seethe in silent, contained rage.

He stands in the shadows, observing the small affair. His eyes had remained glued to the elaborate burgundy casket as it was being lowered to the ground. Up until that point, the concept of Julia being dead hadn't really caught up to him.

He remembers shedding a tear before quickly clearing out.

That very same night though, he had found himself crouched in a corner, sobbing and hiccupping in a most undignified manner because Julia, his Julia, was gone.

And there was nothing he could ever do to get her back.

XIV  
The fourth year following her death, David wakes up to the sun shining upon Julia's dark curls. This time she appears as the Julia he had come to know.

"Good morning David," she says before planting a soft kiss on his lips and he almost chokes on the amount of emotions that come at him.

He smiles softly at her and he can't think of anything but wanting to stay with her here, in this limbo, forever.

"Don't ever leave me," he whispers as he sidles closer to her soft form. He inhales her scent and buries his nose in her curls. She told him once that she didn't want him staying with her out of pure duty but wanted it to be their choice. But he knows that what she really meant was that she wanted him to choose her, on his own. No one had ever cared about what he had wanted in his entire life. Not Vicky. Not the army. Not this godforsaken country he and countless others had laid their lives down for. 

But she did.

"I'll always be here David. Always."

Her voice is light and reassuring and he believes her.

Maybe that's all that matters.

**Author's Note:**

> This is me giving a resolution to what the whole David/Julia relationship really was. Based from my recent internet analyses there are some people who believe David really didn't care for Julia and/or Julia not really caring much for David but I don't believe that's true. (For one David probably wouldn't keep repeatedly correcting Roger about him being her ex-husband or keep referring to her as 'Julia' after her death.) Maybe they weren't in love in the most stereotypical sense of the word but both were in certain places in their lives where they weren't really capable of expressing affection for one another in a healthy manner. Julia was closed off and manipulative at times, probably as a result from men repeatedly being callous and insensitive towards her (i.e. Roger) and David was bruised from his wrecked marriage and needed someone to want him. Neither of them could really be blamed for how they were at that point in their lives but I felt that there was something there. Both of them were driven to reexamine their belief systems and in a way, improve themselves. David stopped being a passive shadow in the background and Julia became a bit more sensitive to the David's plight. Maybe it wasn't love but there was definitely something deeper there than Julia being an escape or surrogate for David's wife or David simply being a fancy of Julia's.


End file.
